[HN Gopher] Philip K. Dick's Substance Abuse and Psychosis
___________________________________________________________________
Philip K. Dick's Substance Abuse and Psychosis
Author : pmoriarty
Score : 35 points
Date : 2023-05-23 21:40 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thecompanion.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thecompanion.app)
| placesalt wrote:
| It's bizarre that the article has a WARNING at the top which is a
| spoiler warning for a movie from the 1990s, but not a sensitive-
| content warning re: suicide.
| ycombinete wrote:
| To be fair the spoilers for Total Recall are whoppers.
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| Off topic, but it bothers me when people decry spoilers for an
| older movie. As if everybody is supposed to have watched every
| major film in the history of Hollywood up to the last N years.
|
| "Spoiler alert for anybody who hasn't seen this movie from
| 1980: the dog did it!"
|
| Ugh.
| rustybolt wrote:
| "substance abuse" is such a weird term.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| a euphemism for sure
| ithkuil wrote:
| Is it though?
|
| The word "abuse" is pretty strong. If I'm abusing substances
| it's not like I'm just having a puff now and then do I?
|
| The term "substance" is a bit generic, I grant you that. But
| does that make it an euphemism just because the exact
| substance is not specified?
| ftxbro wrote:
| if pkd were still alive he would think that gpt is communicating
| with him specifically
| lordfrito wrote:
| You know I think you're 100% right on this... wonder what kind
| of crazy things PKD would come up with after talking to chat
| GPT.
|
| Train up a GPT from his writing, and have a dialogue with
| himself?
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| If only there was some kind of android head we could use for
| that?
|
| https://slate.com/culture/2012/06/philip-k-dick-robot-an-
| and...
| throw458294738 wrote:
| I have seen that LLMs (specifically character.ai) are not great
| for people in psychosis. I'm not sure that it's actually worse
| than a psychosis without an LLM to talk to, but it has been
| painful to watch a loved one drawn in by it.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| The highly LLM-like artificial teachers in _Martian Timeslip_
| (see my other comment here) contribute to the protagonist 's
| psychotic episode in that book, iirc.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| There's a passage in Martian Timeslip[1] where protagonist Jack
| Bohlen is brought in to repair an artificial teacher called
| "Kindly Dad":
|
| > "Hi, Kindly Dad," he said without enthusiasm. Setting down
| his tool case he began unscrewing the back plate of the
| Teacher.
|
| > Kindly Dad said in a warm, sympathetic voice, "What's your
| name, young fellow?"
|
| > "My name," Jack said, as he unfastened the plate and laid it
| down beside him, "is Jack Bohlen, and I'm a kindly dad, too,
| just like you, Kindly Dad. My boy is ten years old, Kindly Dad.
| So don't call me young fellow, O.K.?" Again he was trembling
| hard, and sweating.
|
| > "Ohh," Kindly Dad said. "I see!"
|
| > "What do you see?" Jack said, and discovered that he was
| almost shouting. "Look," he said. "Go through your goddamn
| cycle, O.K.? If it makes it easier for you, go ahead and
| pretend I'm a little boy." I just want to get this done and get
| out of here, he said to himself, with as little trouble as
| possible. He could feel the swelling, complicated emotions
| inside him. Three hours! he thought dismally.
|
| > Kindly Dad said, "Little Jackie, it seems to me you've got a
| mighty heavy weight on your chest today. Am I right?"
|
| > "Today and every day." Jack clicked on his trouble-light and
| shone it up into the works of the Teacher. The mechanism seemed
| to be moving along its cycle properly so far.
|
| Conceiving this as an LLM with a "kindly dad" prompt doesn't
| seem too far a stretch. PKD nicely catches the interpersonal
| "uncanny valley" into which his protagonist has wandered.
|
| 1: https://the-
| eye.eu/public/Books/ManyThings/PDF/Martian%20Tim...
| trash3 wrote:
| [dead]
| jtotheh wrote:
| Robert Crumb depicted PKD's religious experience in comic book
| form, here is a link:
| https://www.themarginalian.org/2014/02/07/r-crumb-weirdo-phi...
| roody15 wrote:
| Interesting read. Have always enjoyed Philip K Dicks novels...
| sadly not surprised he struggled with mental and substance abuse.
| His books read in a way that often feature a character somewhat
| removed from reality or in some form of psychosis. The idea of
| what is real or not real is explored over and over again. I
| cannot help but think he was writing from his own soul or at
| least his own experience. He was always the looker peering into
| the another world that he just didn't quite fit into. It makes me
| feel sad like he was often likely very lonely despite his genius
| and fame :/.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| His perspective is part of what makes his work so relevant to
| today with our manufactured realities that he predicted so
| well.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > sadly not surprised he struggled with mental and substance
| abuse. His books read in a way that often feature a character
| somewhat removed from reality or in some form of psychosis. The
| idea of what is real or not real is explored over and over
| again
|
| Don't take that is an indicator, Haruki Murakami often reads
| similarly and he seems to be a well adjusted person.
| armitron wrote:
| Superficial and entirely missing the mark. PKD spent years doing
| research trying to understand his most important mystical
| experience, and his extensive notes and documentation ended up in
| the book "exegesis" (also greatly influencing the philosophy
| underlying works such as Valis). None of that is of course
| mentioned in the article.
|
| What we get is a random psychiatrist performing armchair
| psychoanalysis on someone he knows very little about.
| dboon wrote:
| Yeah, reads more like a collection of fun apocrypha than a
| serious look at something that affected the great author so
| profoundly
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| If you want to get a handle on PKD and his problems, it's so
| much better to read his work and get his own perspective. Radio
| Free Albemuth is interesting as a kind of precursor to Valis,
| but I must admit to not wanting to read Exegesis as it looks
| too in depth.
| Trasmatta wrote:
| I like just flipping through the Exegesis and reading random
| entries. It's always a fascinating trip. I would never be
| able to read it end to end (and it certainly was never
| intended to be).
|
| It really is amazing to read after you've gone through VALIS.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Okay, you've intrigued me with that - I'll chase down a
| copy
| Trasmatta wrote:
| Here's a few random passages I've highlighted on my
| Kindle. It's completely full of stuff like this, that you
| can just find by flipping somewhere random. It skirts the
| line between genius and insanity (which describes the man
| himself, I think). Sometimes I read one of the passages
| and I'm like "this man had totally lost all semblance of
| sanity" and sometimes I'm like "he was one of the
| smartest men to ever live". I think both are true. (And
| you've got to love how PKD himself explores the "wow, I
| really must be insane" avenue when he talks about The
| Exegesis in VALIS.)
|
| > _The brain is one multiperson ajna chakra, which one
| day as a unitary totality will open, discerning and
| annihilating (the 3rd eye of Shiva). (Herdsman of the
| souls.) All who participate in it will then see as I saw;
| they will be inside the eye; everything outside will be
| blasted, "burned like chaff," i.e., cease to exist. At
| that point the brain will generate its own world out of
| itself. It, collectively, will totally control its world
| --the PTG._
|
| > _Ah! In Ubik locating the Ubik messages in cheap
| commercials was absolutely right on. I couldn't have
| "guessed" more accurately. It's obvious that the real
| author of Ubik was Ubik. It is a self proving novel;
| i.e., it couldn't have come into existence unless it were
| true._
|
| > _This is a sinister life form indeed. First it takes
| power over us, reducing us to slaves, and then it causes
| us to forget our former state, and to be unable to see or
| to think straight, and not to know we can't see or think
| straight, and finally it becomes invisible to us by
| reason of what it has done to us. We cannot even monitor
| our own deformity, our own impairment._
|
| > _Axiomatically, if you derange the brain in precise
| ways, not only will it be deranged, but if you have
| affected precisely the correct circuits it will be
| unaware that it is impaired and so not seek to rectify
| the damage._
|
| > _It's like deciding something is real by comparing it
| with itself. So it's a fool-proof simulation,_
|
| > _No, damn it, it is like Ubik! The outside macrobrain
| is signaling us to wake up, we are like the characters in
| Eye, asleep--not on the floor of the bevatron--but while
| watching for Christ to return. We were made toxic--i.e.,
| put into "half life"--as if killed. Fuck! I know it; Ubik
| is the paradigm! The half-life, the messages, Ubik
| itself, Runciter--we are in a sort of bubble of
| irreality: spurious world generated by--the plenary
| powers, astral determinism, whatever the fuck that is._
| [deleted]
| Simplicitas wrote:
| Good point. On his passing away right before Blade Runner was
| release, not even a mention that reportedly Ridley Scott
| screened parts of the movie, and he evidently was lost for
| words, saying "I'm in awe that you were able to reproduce what
| was in my mind".
| BSEdlMMldESB wrote:
| where does psychosis end and 'real' mystical experience begin?
|
| here's a summary of Philip K. Dick's 'highest truths'
|
| https://www.tekgnostics.com/PDK.HTM
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Probably hasn't ended with:
|
| "18. Real time ceased in 70 C.E. with the fall of the temple at
| Jerusalem. It began again in 1974 C.E. The intervening period
| was a perfect spurious interpolation aping the creation of the
| Mind. 'The Empire never ended,' but in 1974 a cypher was sent
| out as a signal that the Age of Iron was over; the cypher
| consisted of two words: KING FELIX, which refers to the "
| nologic01 wrote:
| Some people live at the cusp of the abyss but they are kind
| enough to dispatch so that we the rest dont have to
| Trasmatta wrote:
| If anyone would really like to delve into PKD's life, I'd
| recommend the biography Divine Invasions (not to be confused with
| PKD's books "The Divine Invasion"). He was such a deeply
| fascinating person, and I feel like most articles you read about
| him manage to only touch on the obvious or superficial.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-05-23 23:00 UTC)